Once I used to love an advert that came on TV about the famous Tyre brand, nowadays commonly known as YANA TYRES- but formally known as Firestone here in Africa- “Its name is known as firestone, where the rubber meets the road!”
Well, I have a clear perspective and understanding of this term since the past several years ago! Yah! So God did bless my wife with the fruit of the womb, and on the 15th of February, 2013 at 2:55, am….he came to this world- one handsome Pazel Eldad Esonga. Do not ask a lot of questions as to why he doesn’t have “ancestral” names…he still is a real Kenyan. Born of a father who is a mix of Luo and Luhya and a mother who is something between Kikuyu and Kamba….what can one make of such Kenyanism!!!!
Any-who, the night he came was as a move of God, and since then I have had some moments of reckoning with the Lord- Are you there? Do you care? Do you fully understand me? Do you intend to come through for this home? Are you in charge? And many more questions that, like Job, I knew would never have answers- especially not from God above! He is not a respecter of persons…not even well-meaning Youth Pastors! He does what He sees fit to do. My mind almost stopped as I watched the two closest persons in my life hospitalized under strange circumstances that I would instead never go back to- so I won’t try to explain! But it was too much; too fast; too soon; while my heartfelt that God was absent, less quickly, and not coming through at all.
It’s funny that the whole of the previous weeks I had been hammering home hard the realities of God’s supremacy and sovereignty…it was to hit home soon to my surprise! Then it struck me- the rubber of my faith in what I have been preaching has just hit the road! I was not enjoying the friction, let alone the sparks! The doctors did not seem to be making a lot of sense in their diagnosis, and I was becoming a little- very anxious in all things; hence there was nothing within me stirred to prayer and supplication, and I was not sure I had a lot to give thanks for before God! I was not just between a rock and a hard place as they say- I felt like I was inside a rock! God, where are you? At some point, all the physical strength within me failed tween, and I could hardly stand…no more tears to cry rock because they had all gone away…no more scripture memories dashing in my mind as they do in my sermon. I was stricken- but brethren were praying for my strength. Thanks to all who’ve been faithfully doing this work!
Do you know why and what you’re doing God? Now I can say amidst it all; God is always right in what he does. He was right in directing my heart to send my wife to hospital in order to save her and the cute boy; he was right when he allowed my wife to go through an urgent, yet very successful surgery; he was in-charge in our process of recovery and recuperation…he is right and so am proven wrong in all my questions concerning His rightness! After the delivery, my wife went into a mental asylum for several weeks. She lost the memory of the baby and myself. She was losing her mind. I think she lost it.
He did not promise that he will take me over the fire but that through the fire, he will sustain me. I heard someone saying that whatever trials that have come my way the past days, God is working out testimony from it all the same. I had not thought that if I asked God to prepare a table for me before my enemies, he would first of all have to allow me to experience the heat of my enemies first…that for me to triumph over the trials I had to endure the tempest nature of the expressions. So in all these things, even as I go through the process, I know that adversities will come, but God is still right. Always right. No matter how hard I see things to be or how unfair I think God is, as His child, even going through tough times- especially in these moments, Jeremiah 29:11 is more real- He has a good plan for me’….it is not because things are good but that in the heat of the moment, He is working for my good!
What is your situation today? Maybe your rubber has hit the road. It may be a sick mother, father, brother, or sister. Probably, cancer has knocked on the door, and this has rocked your boat with an immense storm. Wait upon the Lord. It may not favor you now. Your emotions may be scattered, and trust in the Lord is now, a souvenir long lost. Take courage, my friend. God is always right in all he does.
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Look beyond the moment. 2Cor. 4:16-18, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.“
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Trust in the Sovereignty of God’s grace. 2Cor. 12:8-10, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
So, as I rest at home, six years later, I am settling to the realization that as a Husband, Father, Pastor, and a simple man, when the rubber meets the road, GOD IS ALWAYS RIGHT- WE CAN TRUST HIM!
May your prayer be, “Help me do precisely this O Lord!”
